Past Kindle Book Deals but Still Must Read Books!
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495 past books matching Biographies & Memoirs

A Walk in the Park
Kevin Fedarko
Biographies & Memoirs
Ideal for readers who like true adventure, nature writing, and high-risk wilderness journeys.

A Walk in the Park
Kevin Fedarko
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
A New York Times bestseller and winner of the National Outdoor Book Award, A Walk in the Park follows Kevin Fedarko and Pete McBride as they attempt a 750-mile trek through the Grand Canyon. Their journey reveals hidden wilderness, near-death danger, Native American history, and the fragile future of America’s iconic landscape, with a 4.6-star rating from more than 2,900 Amazon reviewers. Ideal for readers who like true adventure, nature writing, and high-risk wilderness journeys.
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About the book
* Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award in Outdoor Literature * Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction * Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, Air Mail, Smithsonian Magazine, and Financial Times
“A triumph. Fedarko doesn’t describe awe; he induces it.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Passionate…memorable…life-affirming.” —The Wall Street Journal
This New York Times bestseller from the author of The Emerald Mile is a rollicking and poignant account of an epic 750-mile odyssey, on foot, through the heart of the Grand Canyon.
Two friends, zero preparation, one dream. A few years after quitting his job to pursue an ill-advised dream of becoming a whitewater guide on the Colorado River, Kevin Fedarko was approached by his best friend, National Geographic photographer Pete McBride, with a vision as bold as it was harebrained. Together, they would embark on an end-to-end traverse of the Grand Canyon—a journey that, McBride promised, would be “a walk in the park.” Against his better judgment, Fedarko agreed, unaware that the small cluster of experts who had actually completed the crossing billed it as “the toughest hike in the world.”
The ensuing ordeal, which lasted more than a year, revealed a place that was deeper, richer, and far more complex than anything the two men had imagined—and came within a hair’s breadth of killing them both. They struggled to make their way through the all-but impenetrable reaches of the canyon’s truest wilderness, a vertical labyrinth of thousand-foot cliffs and crumbling ledges where water is measured out by the teaspoon and every step is fraught with peril—and where, even today, there is still no trail spanning the length of the country’s best-known and most iconic landmark.
Along the way, veteran long-distance hikers ushered them into secret pockets of enchantment, invisible to the millions of tourists gathered on the rim, that only a handful of humans have ever seen. Members of the canyon’s eleven Native American tribes brought them face-to-face with layers of history that forced them to reconsider myths at the very center of our national parks—and exposed them to the threats of commercial tourism. Even Fedarko’s dying father, who had first pointed him toward the chasm more than forty years earlier but had never set foot there himself, opened him to a new way of seeing the landscape.
And always, there was the great gorge itself: austere and unforgiving, yet suffused with magic, drenched in wonder, and redeemed by its own transcendent beauty. A singular portrait of a sublime place, A Walk in the Park is a deeply moving plea for the preservation of America’s greatest natural treasure.
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North of Ordinary
Sue Aikens
Biographies & Memoirs
Ideal for readers looking for wilderness memoirs centered on survival, self-reliance, Alaska, and an unconventional life far from civilization.

North of Ordinary
Sue Aikens
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
North of Ordinary is Sue Aikens’s memoir of building a life at a remote Alaskan outpost 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, where she confronts extreme weather, predators, isolation, injury, and the effects of a difficult childhood, with a 4.5-star average from more than 2,300 Goodreads ratings. Ideal for readers looking for wilderness memoirs centered on survival, self-reliance, Alaska, and an unconventional life far from civilization.
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About the book
When the wild strips everything away, what's left is who you are.
In the raw, untamed wilds of Alaska—where the wind howls, predators hunt, and the sun disappears for months—only a rare few figure out how to survive. Sue Aikens, the breakout star of National Geographic's long-running TV show Life Below Zero, is one of them. At her remote outpost 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, she weathers more than just brutal winters and hungry bears. Sue battles isolation, injury, and the ghosts of a turbulent past, forging a life in a place most people wouldn't last a day.
Left to fend for herself as a child, Sue's fight to survive began long before she ever set foot in Alaska. In North of Ordinary, she tells the unforgettable story of abandonment, grit, and fierce independence—from navigating deadly storms and surviving a horrific bear attack to learning how to build a life, a home, and a sense of self where most would see only desolation. With her trademark wit, fearless honesty, and an indomitable spirit, Sue proves that the toughest terrain isn't always on the map. It's the one we conquer inside.
Unflinching and inspiring, North of Ordinary is a memoir of resilience, reinvention, and the extraordinary power of choosing your own way through the world.
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All Her Little Lies
Becca Day
Biographies & Memoirs · Thriller
All Her Little Lies turns maternal instinct into a trap when one desperate lie starts pulling a family apart.

All Her Little Lies
Becca Day
Biographies & Memoirs · Thriller · Psychological Thriller
Our take
All Her Little Lies turns maternal instinct into a trap when one desperate lie starts pulling a family apart. After her best friend’s daughter disappears, Alex watches suspicion fall on her own son and chooses to protect him before she knows the truth. This psychological thriller centers on loyalty, fear, and the dangerous moment when love becomes its own kind of deception.
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About the book
'This was a rollercoaster!... I did NOT expect the ending!... A page turner, I read it in one sitting!' NetGalley review, 5 stars
Would you lie to protect the person you love most?
Alex has always had an idyllic life. Living and working on her best friend Cynthia's sprawling family farm, raising their children side by side. Until one night, when Cynthia's eighteen-year-old-daughter Hannah disappears without trace.
Soon Alex's life is spiralling out of control as she questions everything she thought she knew and everyone she trusted. When local detective, Stefani Warner, starts investigating Hannah's disappearance, one person is quickly singled out: Daniel, Alex's nineteen-year-old son.
In a panic, Alex lies to protect Daniel. But as her lies begin to multiply, Alex is becoming trapped.
Did Alex do the right thing for her child? Or has she instead put all of them in terrible danger...
The gripping new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of The Girl Beyond the Gate. Fans of K.L Slater, Claire Douglas and Lisa Jewell will be absolutely hooked from the very first page.
Readers are gripped by All Her Little Lies:
'Wow! What a book!... Suspense, intrigue, murder, a great who done it and so many crazy twists!' NetGalley review, 5 stars
'Fantastic... I was so intrigued and riveted; I could not put this down. So freaking good. Loads upon loads of twists' NetGalley review, 5 stars
'Wow... I absolutely loved it from start to finish... Impossible to put down and had me gripped from the start!... Fast paced and action packed, the twists are amazing, I could never have guessed who the killer was!' Goodreads review, 5 stars
'Brilliantly gripping... A thrill-ride of twists and turns... A cracking read' Philippa East, author of Little White Lies
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The Midnight Assassin
Skip Hollandsworth
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
The Midnight Assassin revisits a year of terror that turned 1880s Austin into a city gripped by panic, suspicion, and scandal.

The Midnight Assassin
Skip Hollandsworth
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
The Midnight Assassin revisits a year of terror that turned 1880s Austin into a city gripped by panic, suspicion, and scandal. As brutal murders spread across class and race lines, investigators chased suspects through a case that predated the language of serial killers. This fits readers looking for narrative true crime with historical detail, social tension, and an unsettling unsolved mystery.
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About the book
A New York Times bestseller, The Midnight Assassin is a sweeping narrative history of a terrifying serial killer--America's first--who stalked Austin, Texas in 1885.
In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives, and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class. At the time the concept of a serial killer was unthinkable, but the murders continued, the killer became more brazen, and the citizens' panic reached a fever pitch.
Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders, and the crimes would expose what a newspaper described as "the most extensive and profound scandal ever known in Austin." And yes, when Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city.
With vivid historical detail and novelistic flair, Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth brings this terrifying saga to life.
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Lit
Mary Karr
Biographies & Memoirs
A sharp fit for readers drawn to candid literary memoirs about addiction, family, recovery, and the complicated work of rebuilding a life.

Lit
Mary Karr
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
Mary Karr continues the story begun in The Liars' Club and Cherry, recounting her struggles with alcoholism, marriage, motherhood, recovery, and an unexpected turn toward faith, with a 3.9-star average from more than 28,500 Goodreads ratings. A sharp fit for readers drawn to candid literary memoirs about addiction, family, recovery, and the complicated work of rebuilding a life.
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About the book
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
New York Times Book Review • The New Yorker • Entertainment Weekly • Time • Washington Post • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • Christian Science Monitor • Slate • St. Louise Post-Dispatch • Cleveland Plain Dealer • Seattle Times • NBCC Award Finalist
Mary Karr’s unforgettable sequel to her beloved and bestselling memoirs The Liars’ Club and Cherry "lassos you, hogties your emotions and won’t let you go" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times).
Lit is a riveting story of addiction and recovery about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. Written with Karr's relentless honesty, unflinching self-scrutiny, and irreverent, lacerating humor, this literary memoir is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up—as only Mary Karr can tell it.
The Boston Globe calls Lit a book that "reminds us not only how compelling personal stories can be, but how, in the hands of a master, they can transmute into the highest art." The New York Times Book Review calls it "a master class on the art of the memoir" and Susan Cheever states, simply, that Lit is "the best book about being a woman in America I have read in years."
A landmark memoir about motherhood, faith, and the writer’s life, Lit explores:
- Journey to Sobriety: From drunken nights on a back porch to the church basement meeting that changes everything, Karr chronicles her escape from alcoholism with unflinching candor.
- Memoir about Motherhood: The story of becoming a mother by letting go of a mother—a powerful look at breaking the cycle of family dysfunction and finding a new way to love.
- A Writer’s Life: A poet’s transformation, this is a master class on how learning to live—and get sober—is essential to learning how to write.
- Finding Faith: The raw, unexpected, and often hilarious story of a reluctant convert finding her way from the Ivy League to a Catholic church, discovering a spiritual life she never thought possible.
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What Remains
Carole Radziwill
Biographies & Memoirs
Loss arrives in waves, reshaping a life already defined by ambition, love, and unexpected paths.

What Remains
Carole Radziwill
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
Loss arrives in waves, reshaping a life already defined by ambition, love, and unexpected paths. In What Remains, Carole Radziwill reflects on her journey from a modest upbringing to a world shaped by journalism, marriage, and profound grief. With clarity and restraint, this memoir explores friendship, identity, and the lasting imprint of those we lose.
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About the book
A stunning, tragic memoir about John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and his cousin Anthony Radziwill, by Radziwill’s widow.
What Remains is a vivid and haunting memoir about a girl from a working-class town who becomes an award-winning television producer and marries a prince, Anthony Radziwill. Carole grew up in a small suburb with a large, eccentric cast of characters. At nineteen, she struck out for New York City to find a different life. Her career at ABC News led her to the refugee camps of Cambodia, to a bunker in Tel Aviv, and to the scene of the Menendez murders. Her marriage led her into the old world of European nobility and the newer world of American aristocracy.
What Remains begins with loss and returns to loss. A small plane plunges into the ocean carrying John F. Kennedy Jr., Anthony’s cousin, and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Carole’s closest friend. Three weeks later Anthony dies of cancer. With unflinching honesty and a journalist’s keen eye, Carole Radziwill explores the enduring ties of family, the complexities of marriage, the importance of friendship, and the challenges of self-invention. Beautifully written, What Remains “gets at the essence of what matters,” wrote Oprah Winfrey. “Friendship, compassion, destiny.”
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Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Katherine Boo
Biographies & Memoirs
In a settlement beside Mumbai’s luxury hotels, hope and desperation live side by side.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Katherine Boo
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
In a settlement beside Mumbai’s luxury hotels, hope and desperation live side by side. Katherine Boo follows families in Annawadi as they chase stability, opportunity, and dignity within systems shaped by poverty, corruption, and inequality. This narrative nonfiction study is intimate and unsparing, tracing how ambition, injustice, and survival collide in lives constantly pressured by forces larger than themselves.
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About the book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY • AN OPRAH DAILY BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE PAST TWO DECADES
“Inspiring . . . extraordinary . . . [Katherine Boo] shows us how people in the most desperate circumstances can find the resilience to hang on to their humanity. Just as important, she makes us care.”—People
“A tour de force of social justice reportage and a literary masterpiece.”—Judges, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award
ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Washington Post, O: The Oprah Magazine, USA Today, New York, The Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, Newsday
In this breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport.
As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Meanwhile Asha, a woman of formidable ambition, has identified a shadier route to the middle class. With a little luck, her beautiful daughter, Annawadi’s “most-everything girl,” might become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest children, like the young thief Kalu, feel themselves inching closer to their dreams. But then Abdul is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal.
With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, based on years of uncompromising reporting, carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds—and into the hearts of families impossible to forget.
WINNER OF: The PEN Nonfiction Award • The Los Angeles Times Book Prize • The American Academy of Arts and Letters Award • The New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, People, Entertainment Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Economist, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, The Seattle Times, The Nation, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Denver Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Week, Kansas City Star, Slate, Publishers Weekly
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No Place Like Murder
Janis Thornton
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Beneath the familiar image of small-town Midwestern life, violence and notoriety leave a long and unsettling trail.

No Place Like Murder
Janis Thornton
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
Beneath the familiar image of small-town Midwestern life, violence and notoriety leave a long and unsettling trail. In No Place Like Murder, Janis Thornton revisits twenty historical crimes through the lives, motives, trials, and aftermaths of the people involved. This is a true crime collection rooted in place, revealing how brutality, ambition, and desperation shaped headlines across the Midwest.
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About the book
"This engrossing collection of historical Midwest murders reads like a thriller. True crime at its best. I couldn't put it down." —Susan Furlong, author of the Bone Gap Travellers novels
A modern retelling of 20 sensational true crimes, No Place Like Murder reveals the inside details behind nefarious acts that shocked the Midwest between 1869 and 1950. The stories chronicle the misdeeds, examining the perpetrators' mindsets, motives, lives, apprehensions, and trials, as well as what became of them long after.
True crime author Janis Thornton profiles notorious murderers such as Frankie Miller, who was fed up when her fiancé stood her up for another woman. As fans of the song "Frankie and Johnny" already know, Frankie met her former lover at the door with a shotgun.
Thornton's tales reveal the darker side of life in the Midwest, including the account of Isabelle Messmer, a plucky young woman who dreamed of escaping her quiet farm-town life. After she nearly took down two tough Pittsburgh policemen in 1933, she was dubbed "Gun Girl" and went on to make headlines from coast to coast. In 1942, however, after a murder conviction in Texas, she vowed to do her time and go straight. Full of intrigue and revelations, No Place Like Murder also features such folks as Chirka and Rasico, the first two Hoosier men to die in the electric chair after they brutally murdered their wives in 1913. The two didn't meet until their fateful last night.
An enthralling and chilling collection, No Place Like Murder is sure to thrill true crime lovers.
"Thornton wittily describes heretofore unheralded true crime stories from Indiana's small towns." —Keven McQueen, author of Horror in the Heartland
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Letter to My Daughter
Maya Angelou
Biographies & Memoirs
A life examined with honesty becomes an offering of strength, tenderness, and hard-won clarity.

Letter to My Daughter
Maya Angelou
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
A life examined with honesty becomes an offering of strength, tenderness, and hard-won clarity. In Letter to My Daughter, Maya Angelou reflects on love, faith, grief, identity, and survival through a series of personal essays that speak across generations. It fits readers looking for memoir-inflected nonfiction that feels intimate, wise, and grounded in resilience, compassion, and lived experience.
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About the book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Maya Angelou shares her path to living well and with meaning in this absorbing book of personal essays.
Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter transcends genres and categories: guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight.
Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons in compassion and fortitude: how she was brought up by her indomitable grandmother in segregated Arkansas, taken in at thirteen by her more worldly and less religious mother, and grew to be an awkward, six-foot-tall teenager whose first experience of loveless sex paradoxically left her with her greatest gift, a son.
Whether she is recalling such lost friends as Coretta Scott King and Ossie Davis, extolling honesty, decrying vulgarity, explaining why becoming a Christian is a “lifelong endeavor,” or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice–Maya Angelou writes from the heart to millions of women she considers her extended family.
Like the rest of her remarkable work, Letter to My Daughter entertains and teaches; it is a book to cherish, savor, re-read, and share.
“I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.”—from Letter to My Daughter
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Easy Street
Ron Perlman
Biographies & Memoirs
A life shaped by insecurity, reinvention, and stubborn endurance turns unexpectedly moving in the hands of someone who has spent decades behind unforgettable faces.

Easy Street
Ron Perlman
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
A life shaped by insecurity, reinvention, and stubborn endurance turns unexpectedly moving in the hands of someone who has spent decades behind unforgettable faces. In Easy Street (the Hard Way), Ron Perlman traces his path from a difficult New York upbringing to a long, hard-won career in Hollywood, reflecting on craft, self-image, and survival along the way. This memoir offers behind-the-scenes insight, emotional honesty, and the perspective of a working actor who kept going.
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About the book
The engaging, passionate, always-honest, and often-hilarious memoir of actor Ron Perlman--his triumphant story of perseverance and determination navigating the slippery slopes of Hollywood, with a foreword by Guillermo del Toro
Ron Perlman was a kid who had a myriad of self-image issues, yet he triumphed in an industry that trades on image and self-confidence. He landed a leading role in Quest for Fire. He won a Golden Globe for Beauty and the Beast. And he played the title role in two Hellboy movies, becoming along the way an icon among sci-fi and comic book fans worldwide.
Although his name may be unknown to some, most people know Ron Perlman's face, despite the fact that for nearly half his career he's been disguised under feature-altering foam-rubber prosthetics. On his offbeat path to success, Ron has amassed nearly 200 stage, TV, voiceover, and major motion picture credits, including roles in Drive, Pacific Rim, and a six-year gig as the badass biker boss Clay Morrow in Sons of Anarchy.
In Easy Street (the Hard Way), Ron shares his life story, starting with his up-by-your-bootstraps background in New York's Washington Heights. His father, a Swing Era drummer, gave up his dream in order to feed his sons while his mother worked as a municipal clerk. Ron's hard-earned road to Easy Street included bouts of abject poverty, heartbreaking familial episodes, and a long, often uncomfortable struggle for self-acceptance.
He sheds light on his life as a working actor and also offers behind-the-scenes insight into the working styles of internationally famous directors, including Jean-Jacques Annaud, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy and Academy Award-winning Pan's Labyrinth). He provides his own peek into Hollywood, up close and personal, where he has encountered the likes of Marlon Brando, Sean Connery, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and others. Plus, he turns his eye on the trajectory of American culture--the good and the bad--as observed by a man who started out in a mom-and-pop world where the arts were disseminated by individuals rather than corporations.
Easy Street (the Hard Way) will inspire anyone who has ever dared to dream and offers a roadmap to the next generation of dreamers.
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Educated
Tara Westover
Biographies & Memoirs
Good for readers who want memoirs about education, family loyalty, self-invention, and the cost of leaving home.

Educated
Tara Westover
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
A #1 New York Times bestseller called “Extraordinary” by The New York Times, Educated follows Tara Westover as she leaves her isolated survivalist family, enters a classroom for the first time at seventeen, and goes on to study at Harvard and Cambridge, with a 4.6-star rating from more than 229,700 Amazon reviewers. Good for readers who want memoirs about education, family loyalty, self-invention, and the cost of leaving home.
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About the book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER • One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University
“Extraordinary . . . an act of courage and self-invention.”—The New York Times
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY • FINALIST: National Book Critics Circle’s Award In Autobiography and John Leonard Prize For Best First Book • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award • Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
“Beautiful and propulsive . . . Despite the singularity of [Westover’s] childhood, the questions her book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to those we love? And how much must we betray them to grow up?”—Vogue
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, O: The Oprah Magazine, Time, NPR, Good Morning America, San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, The Economist, Financial Times, Newsday, New York Post, theSkimm, Refinery29, Bloomberg, Self, Real Simple, Town & Country, Bustle, Paste, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, LibraryReads, Book Riot, Pamela Paul, KQED, New York Public Library
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The Snake and the Spider
Karen Kingsbury
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
What begins as an ordinary spring break trip darkens into a case defined by absence, dread, and the slow unraveling of every parent’s worst fear.

The Snake and the Spider
Karen Kingsbury
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
What begins as an ordinary spring break trip darkens into a case defined by absence, dread, and the slow unraveling of every parent’s worst fear. As two teenage boys vanish after missing routine check-ins, the search gives way to the devastating truth of abduction and murder. The Snake and the Spider fits a true crime list with its intimate emotional stakes, real-world horror, and focus on how violence shatters families long before answers arrive.
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About the book
A New York Times–bestselling author and former Los Angeles Times reporter chronicles the murder and abduction of two teens during a dream spring break vacation.
Best friends Daryl Barber and James Boucher were responsible, and their parents trusted them to spend Spring Break at Daytona Beach unchaperoned. When the boys missed their agreed-upon daily check-ins, their parents were disappointed. When they failed to come home on their planned return date, their parents were terrified. They could not have known that their innocent sons would encounter two violent men on the Florida coast. They could not have imagined the torture their children would endure before their bodies turned up four months later in a Florida swamp. What starts as a dream vacation, ended as every parent's worst nightmare . . .
New York Times–bestselling author Karen Kingsbury narrates the tragic tale of a road trip gone horribly wrong in this not-to-be missed true crime novel.
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